The Reading List by Sara Nisha Adams

 In early March seven lucky members met at Betsy’s home to discuss her book

“The Reading List” by Sara Nisha Adams. This book is set in Wembley, England.

and is a heartwarming novel about a list of recommended novels mysteriously found in a

library book which is circulated among the diverse patrons of a small library.

The novel celebrates the old school joys of reading and getting emotionally involved

with fictitious characters and learning from them.

The novel develops a friendship between lonely Mukesh Patel and Aleisha a teen summer

worker at the library.  Sometimes you have to step out of your comfort zone in order to combat 

loneliness and depression. We discussed the role of a library and the importance of

keeping them open in this digital age.

It turns out that  Mukesh’s deceased wife, Naina, was the one who distributed the list around 

the neighborhood. She was able to share her love of reading not only with her family but

with the community at large. The author created a second reading list of novels and Kathy gave

us a printout of that list, We had a lively discussion not only about the book but about what being

a member of our reading group does for us on a personal level.

Now the reason I said we were a lucky group of seven was because of Betsy’s culinary delights.

We had a delicious Ina Garten inspired seafood chowder and a wonderful mixed salad followed by

Strawberry topped cheesecake. There were cocktails to start, wonderful dinner wine and a fine

Cognac finish. The bar was set very high by Betsy who used her fine chinaware and cutlery.

Carol sent in her choice, “ The Girl With The Seven Names” by Hyeonseo Lee.

The Dictionary of Lost Words by Pip Williams

For our January 2024 read Sarah chose the Dictionary of lost words written 

by Pip Williams, an Australian author..

It is a historical fiction novel about the compilation of the Oxford dictionary, the suffrage 

movement  for women’s voting rights, and World War I.

Some of the characters are real and others are fictitious.

As it turns out the project was male dominated and also excluded words used by the lower class. Many

words  associated with women and common people were left out.

In the absence of computers it was a very tedious process .

The place where the compilation took place was called a scriptorium.

Esme is a child who picks up word slips dropped on the floor, usually ones

that are left out of the dictionary as they are deemed inappropriate. She saves these in a chest

and eventually they are published in the dictionary of lost words.

We all agreed this was a unique find on Sarah’s part and it shed a lot of light on

what is entailed in the opus of compiling a dictionary. 

We finished the evening with two kinds of soups, hearty bread and plenty

of wine both red and white.

Betsy chose “The Reading List” by Sara Nisha Adams